BIGASK

MASTERCHEF sea­son one run­ner-up Poh Ling Yeow has been one of the more con­spic­u­ous suc­cesses to grad­u­ate from the re­al­ity se­ries and is now a celebrity chef in her own right. In Septem­ber she’ll launch the third sea­son of ABC TV cook­ing pro­gram Poh’s Kitchen and this week she heads back on to MasterChef All Stars to set­tle a few old scores. com­mer­cial kitchens to have an ad­van­tage. What do you think? Ev­ery­one has got a re­ally dif­fer­ent skill set to of­fer and ev­ery­one has got such dif­fer­ent brand­ing. Like Julie (Good­win) is all about home cooked food. Chris Bade­noch is still head to tail, and he’s got a res­tau­rant but is mainly front of house. Justine (Schofield) and Julie and I have done a lot of pre­sent­ing and recipe writ­ing. I don’t think one (skill set) is bet­ter than the other. What are the chal­lenges like on All Stars, es­pe­cially the dreaded cro­quem­bouche? We do re­visit a lot of old foes in terms of chal­lenges, so that’s been pretty fun – and not so fun at the same time. The cro­quem­bouche one was re­ally dif­fi­cult, it was a re­lay this year. Deal­ing­with hot su­gar and bak­ing is al­ways re­ally dif­fi­cult be­cause there are so many fac­tors that can go wrong and in a team chal­lenge even more so. Did you see this com­pe­ti­tion as a chance to re­fight the sea­son one fi­nale? Oh, yeah, a lit­tle bit. I didn’t dare to go there too much be­cause I think you have to go into this with a spirit of fun. Com­pet­i­tive­ness def­i­nitely comes into play but I think so much of it is just want­ing to raise the bar for your­self, be­ing among such good cooks. It’s been re­ally tough be­cause it’s such a nar­row dis­tance be­tween ev­ery­one’s dishes, it’s split­ting hairs of­ten. What can­we­ex­pect from sea­son three of Poh’s Kitchen? We’re steer­ing right away from high-end food and celebrity chefs and tak­ing it right back to the ba­sics, tak­ing it back to how food does amaz­ing things ty­ing community groups to­gether. I’m re­ally ex­cited about it. MasterChef All Stars, Chan­nel 10, Thurs­day, 7pm